The Politics of Selective Compassion

The moral stature of a political establishment is determined as much by the injustices it is willing to confront as by the causes it publicly espouses. Compassion, when elevated to the language of public morality, must transcend the narrow confines of ideological allegiance, electoral expediency and communal identity. It cannot be dispensed selectively, nor can historical suffering be accorded varying degrees of legitimacy according to its political usefulness. Yet, India's political landscape has often betrayed an uncomfortable asymmetry in the remembrance of human tragedies. Some events remain deeply embedded in political rhetoric and collective discourse, while others, despite their devastating consequences, struggle to receive an equally emphatic acknowledgement. The reported account of Sonia Gandhi's emotional response to the demolition of the Babri Masjid has therefore revived a larger and more consequential question: why has the persecution and mass displacement of Kashmiri Pandits failed to command comparable moral and political attention from the Congress establishment?

In her forthcoming memoir, Belonging: A Journey of Love, Sonia Gandhi reportedly recalls breaking down in tears while watching television coverage of the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992. The emotional response of an individual to the destruction of a religious structure is neither inexplicable nor inherently objectionable. Places of worship are repositories of collective memory, historical continuity and deeply cherished cultural associations. Their destruction can understandably evoke profound anguish. However, when such recollections enter the public domain, they also invite a legitimate examination of the relationship between personal sentiment and political responsibility. The question is not whether Sonia Gandhi was entitled to grieve over Ayodhya. It is whether the political establishment she subsequently led demonstrated a comparable moral urgency in recognising the suffering of Kashmiri Pandits, whose lives were irrevocably transformed by the violence that engulfed the Valley in 1989–90.

The exodus of Kashmiri Pandits remains one of the most traumatic and consequential episodes in independent India's history. As militancy gathered momentum in Kashmir, members of this indigenous Hindu community became victims of targeted assassinations, intimidation, threats and systematic persecution. An atmosphere of terror progressively eroded the conditions necessary for their continued existence in the Valley, compelling thousands of families to abandon their ancestral homes and seek refuge elsewhere. What followed was not simply a demographic rearrangement but an extraordinary rupture in the historical continuity of a community. Homes that had sheltered generations were deserted, livelihoods were extinguished, familiar neighbourhoods disappeared from everyday life, and an ancient cultural inheritance was abruptly separated from its geographical roots. The displacement inflicted a wound that transcended material deprivation, leaving behind an enduring sense of dispossession, bereavement and unfulfilled belonging.

The magnitude of this tragedy is reflected in government records. The Ministry of Home Affairs informed Parliament in December 2014 that approximately 62,000 Kashmiri migrant families were registered across the country. Its response also acknowledged the mass migration that followed the onset of militancy in the early 1990s. Such figures, however, cannot adequately convey the human dimensions of the catastrophe. Behind every displaced family lay fractured lives, interrupted education, abandoned property and the anguish of being rendered strangers to one's own ancestral landscape. Children grew up in unfamiliar surroundings, elderly people

carried memories of homes they might never see again, and subsequent generations inherited an exile they had not personally chosen. The tragedy was therefore not confined to the immediate victims of violence; it became an intergenerational experience of cultural estrangement and historical loss.

Historical integrity requires, nevertheless, that political responsibility be assigned with precision. Sonia Gandhi was not a political office-holder when the exodus occurred. She had not formally entered the political arena, the Union government was headed by V.P. Singh, and Rajiv Gandhi was Leader of the Opposition. It would consequently be inaccurate to attribute direct administrative responsibility for the events of 1989–90 to her personally. But this historical distinction does not place the subsequent political record beyond legitimate scrutiny. Sonia Gandhi assumed the presidency of the Congress in 1998 and subsequently became one of the most influential figures in Indian politics. The Congress-led UPA government, which came to power in 2004, had considerable institutional and political opportunities to articulate a comprehensive position on the tragedy. The relevant question, therefore, concerns not her personal responsibility for the original violence, but whether the political leadership she came to exercise accorded the displaced community the sustained recognition, attention and moral solidarity it deserved.

The UPA government's comprehensive rehabilitation package of ₹1,618.40 crore, announced in 2008, was an important administrative intervention and should be acknowledged as such. It provided for housing assistance, employment, educational scholarships and other measures intended to facilitate the rehabilitation of displaced families. Yet, the limitations of an exclusively administrative approach must also be recognised. Financial assistance can alleviate deprivation, but it cannot independently restore an uprooted community's historical relationship with its homeland. Employment packages cannot erase the memory of persecution, and the construction of transit accommodation cannot, by itself, resolve the deeper crisis of cultural displacement. Rehabilitation must extend beyond material provision to encompass security, dignity, preservation of identity and the creation of conditions in which a return, if desired, becomes both meaningful and sustainable. The difference between managing the aftermath of an injustice and confronting its underlying causes is too fundamental to be overlooked.

More disturbing is the ideological inconsistency that selective remembrance can expose. The demolition of the Babri Masjid deserves serious historical and constitutional scrutiny; its consequences for communal relations and public life cannot simply be dismissed. But the persecution of Kashmiri Pandits deserves an equally uncompromising examination. The defence of minority rights cannot become contingent upon the political acceptability of the minority concerned. Secularism, if it is to possess any enduring ethical substance, must protect every vulnerable community without discrimination. A political establishment cannot credibly invoke pluralism while appearing reluctant to confront a tragedy that complicates its preferred political narrative. The universality of human dignity is precisely what distinguishes a principled commitment to justice from the instrumental appropriation of suffering.

The Kashmiri Pandits were not peripheral to Kashmir's history. They were an intrinsic part of its intellectual, spiritual and cultural inheritance. Their displacement impoverished the Valley's plural social fabric and severed an important thread in India's civilisational continuity. Consequently, any meaningful conversation about Kashmir's reconciliation and future must recognise their legitimate aspirations, preserve their cultural memory and address the conditions

necessary for their dignified rehabilitation. Their predicament cannot remain an occasional subject of political speeches or an administrative obligation confined to government files.

This debate must not become a contest over the authenticity of individual grief. Human emotions cannot be prescribed, quantified or subjected to partisan ownership. Nevertheless, public figures and political organisations must remain answerable for the consistency of their public positions. Remembering Ayodhya does not require forgetting Kashmir; acknowledging the anguish associated with the Babri Masjid demolition does not diminish the suffering of Kashmiri Pandits. A mature democracy must have the moral breadth to accommodate both histories without allowing one to eclipse the other.

The ultimate measure of political compassion lies not in the tears shed over tragedies that command public attention, but in the courage to acknowledge suffering that political convenience would rather leave unexamined. The Kashmiri Pandits deserve neither conditional sympathy nor ceremonial remembrance. They deserve historical recognition, moral solidarity and justice. For a nation's conscience to remain credible, it must be incapable of discriminating between the tears of its citizens.